No Democratic Democracy. NY Needs A Green For Senate.
The news came out in the news cycle shadow of a Friday afternoon, but it’s well worth paying attention to: The Democratic Party machine has pushed U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney out of her primary Democratic Party campaign against appointed U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
Consider what this means: Democratic voters didn’t have the chance to select the current junior Senator from New York, and they won’t have the chance to select their own candidate in 2010. That indicates a rather disdainful attitude toward rank and file Democrats by the Democratic Party leadership.
Senator Gillibrand has been a true Blue Dog Democrat, supporting a right wing agenda that is difficult to differentiate from a Republican agenda. Of course, a Republican challenger to Gillibrand won’t present a progressive alternative. It’s up to the Green Party of New York now to find a candidate for U.S. Senate, to give progressive voters a choice they can feel good about in 2010.
How can you write, “Senator Gillibrand has been a true Blue Dog Democrat, supporting a right wing agenda that is difficult to differentiate from a Republican agenda” when Gillibrand voted with the Democrats 93 percent of the time?
Jeanne, what kind of votes were those? Most of them were procedural. Republicans voted with the Democrats a good amount of the time. Look over at the legislative database established by That’s My Congress, and you’ll see that Kirsten Gillibrand has established a strongly right-leaning legislative record.
So Democrats Against Democracy are attacking their own party now. I’ve read statements from Jonathan Tasini that the Democratic machine is trying to remove challengers to their selected senate candidates; how exactly are they doing this?
If the NY Dems want to continue running right-wingers like Schumer (D-Wall St) and Gillibrand, the Green Party should rise to the occasion and nominate two candidates who truly represent New York’s progressive values.
As an aside, I wonder how “progressive Democrats” and their ilk feel about their party’s clampdown on democracy within its own ranks.